From a Reuters news story today, "Cell Phones 'Blind' Drivers"
Writing in the March issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Strayer's group said use of a cell phone clearly distracted the drivers.... "It is like studies that show 90 percent of people think they are better-than-average drivers. Forty percent of them are wrong." Thane Plambeck 650 321 4884 office 650 323 4928 fax http://www.qxmail.com/home.htm
"It is like studies that show 90 percent of people think they are better-than-average drivers. Forty percent of them are wrong."
I'm not sure about that, because of localization effects. If I picked out 100 of you, and tested each of you at the locales where you live, I imagine most of you would be in the top 90% for the territory you find familiar. --Ed Pegg Jr
You may be right for a select group, but you can't have 90% of everyone be better-than-average; studies show this closer to 50%.
My wife Jessica teaches quantitative reasoning at Wellesley, and actually used the driving thing as an example last year. I'll get details wrong, but there's some study that says roughly: most people judge themselves to be above average because, in accidents they are involved in, they are "at fault" less than half the time. In the simple model where every accident is 2-car and one driver caused it, this seems reasonable at first glance -- and you get the 90% result if each bad driver causes nine accidents.
Sure you can... Studies or not, in theory, you could have everyone *but*one* be above average.
(Jessica also ends her introduction to averages with the classic "Almost everyone has an above-average number of legs.") --Michael Kleber kleber@brandeis.edu
would you send your kids to a school where half the children have below-average intelligence? And, worse, the teachers too? Yikes! Wouter. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bernie Cosell" <bernie@fantasyfarm.com> To: <math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Tuesday, January 28, 2003 7:23 PM Subject: Re: [math-fun] cell phone math
On 28 Jan 2003 at 10:16, Nick Baxter wrote:
You may be right for a select group, but you can't have 90% of everyone be better-than-average; studies show this closer to 50%.
Sure you can... Studies or not, in theory, you could have everyone *but*one* be above average.
/Bernie\
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